Interestingly enough, I was not a coffee person for a long time - well into my Master's degree, as I recall. I was primarily a tea person - coffee held the same attraction to me as many other perceived adult items: something adults did which almost most seemed more as a marker of adult status than done for actual pleasure. The times I had it was overly hot and tasted burnt.
And then, one day, the heavens opened and wonders of coffee were (apparently) revealed to me.
Now, coffee is a daily occurrence. I have it a cup in the morning at home, and then I follow up with a cup or two at work (really, never more than three - I am done by 0930 or so). There are few things more pleasurable than a hot cup of coffee that has just bee brewed.
I am somewhat choosy about my coffee - I do not, for example, care for the Large Green Mermaid's coffee all that much. It seems (again) overly burnt and certainly overly expensive. At the same time, I am not so much of a connoisseur that I will only drink one kind of coffee or need a particular coffee machine and grinder - we have a reliable "Mr. Coffee" that has worked for more years than I care to remember and a French Press if we are really feeling snooty.
The best kind of coffee, in my opinion, is the Cafe du Monde's Coffee And Chicory which is a dark roast with ground chicory in it. It is intensely strong - so strong in fact that The Ravishing Mrs. TB will scarcely drink it when I have it which means all the more for me, I suppose (and, it still comes in steel cans which are great for all kinds of uses and projects). For years I was sad because it was a special order item; it is now available in lots of places, which just makes my life better overall.
All of this is moot, of course, because there is no caffeinated coffee right now.
We have some decaffeinated coffee. It is actually what I am drinking right now. It meets all the requirements, of course: hot, brewed, not tasting burnt. No caffeine, of course, but that is more of physiological problem rather than matter of taste or habit (although I will say in passing that the availability of different kinds of caffeinated coffee well exceeds that of decaffeinated coffee). It is just more a matter of concept, much like non-alcoholic beer: if there is no particular reason (medical or dangerous habits) that I need to do it, why?
I have contemplated such things as the fact that caffeine falls into one of my "Bad Four" food habits (Sugar, Fat, Alcohol, Caffeine) - not that I am probably terrible on any one but these are the ones most likely to cause problems and therefore the most likely to be surrendered at some point. Of all of them, caffeine would probably be the one most difficult to surrender. A man can life without alcohol and even without most kinds of sugar. (yes, I know fat is required - but not nearly so much as most eat). Caffeine - coffee - is the one thing on that list that represents a pleasure for which there can be limited bad health effects but provides a mental balance and tradition in starting my day.
None of which, of course, helps me at the moment. Sigh. Well, I foresee a stop at a store in my near future...
Never been much of a coffee drinker at all except for mocha frapa things I got into but I kicked that habit over a year ago now.
ReplyDeleteI felt it was important to get rid of all habits I couldn't feed on my own.
I actually have not had one of those frapa mocha things in quite a while - too expensive and way too many calories.
DeleteYour thinking is sound. I suppose I just figure it one of those luxuries I will have to adapt to when its not available. If I were smart, I would be looking at traditional alternatives - for some reason I seem to remember they had coffee substitute in the South during The War Between The States.
I drink coffee only on my twelve hour shifts to get me thru the grind. And decaffeinated would certainly not do at all TB
ReplyDeleteJohn
I could not see drinking decaffeinated during a 12 hour shift either. Might as well be drinking hot water with coffee coloring. Hopefully you do not have to do too many of those.
DeleteTB - when i was working, 3 coffees before i left for work. i had my own Hello Kitty coffee pot on my desk at work for years! it made 4 full cups and once that was gotten through by lunchtime, then it was across the street to starbucks - venti baby! and always dark roast! then one or two of my colleagues would stop by my desk in the afternoon and offer to bring me a coffee. 2 more venti's by 4pm. if i knew i was working late (which was always the case), i would go at 4pm and get myself 4 more venti's! i drank A LOT of coffee. in fact, i pretty much lived on it.
ReplyDeletewhen i stopped working, i quit cold turkey. don't know why, but something was telling me that the only reason i drank so much of it was to keep me hopped up to be able to work 10 and 12 hour days, sometimes 7 days a week!
jam still likes to have a cup in the morning, and every time the smell calls to me, i have a sip or two. and within 15 minutes my head is pounding, my stomach goes fluttery and i get the jitters. it's awful! it's like an allergic reaction or something.
i don't think having a cup of coffee or 3 a day is bad for anyone. and i don't see it as a vice. i think it is only a bad thing when someone lives on it like i did.
sorry about the decaf - that just sucks! bahahahah!
your friend,
kymber
Wow Kymber - That is some serious coffee drinking. I do not think even I at my coffee drinking heyday could have consumed that much - although given the work schedule you describe, perhaps it really was a requirement for survival.
ReplyDeleteI am like Jam I suppose - there is nothing better than a very fresh cup of coffee in the morning - the smell, the aroma, the warm cup. I am almost tempted to try to go to decaf exclusively just to see what happens.
All in all, I managed to survive one day with caffeinated coffee pretty well - and hey, I learn to spell caffeine pretty definitively (not a word I ordinarily use).
Lhiats, TB